Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness

Lilly/Goswami Conference on Consciousness and Quantum Physics at Esalen, December 1983

Synopsis:

McKenna contends that tryptophan-derived hallucinogens, such as DMT, psilocybin, and ayahuasca, induce psychophysical processes that arise at the quantum mechanical level of consciousness associated with dream states and hallucinations. He is particularly interested in the intensity of the hallucinations and the concentration of activity in the visual cortex that these naturally occurring compounds evoke. Since these compounds work directly on language centers in the brain, McKenna proposes that it is possible for one to enter into dialogue with the experience and attempt to map the territory as he himself has done. After all, if one accepts McKenna’s notion that psilocybin and DMT invoke the Logos, what endeavor is more worth undertaking than the exploration and understanding of this strange domain of mind.

McKenna goes on to describe the impact his experiments with these mind-altering substances have had on him and the ways in which his thinking has been shaped by his experiences. He describes the "effects" that smoking DMT have had on him in order to “invite the attention of experimentalists, whether they be shamans or scientists” to the bizarre phenomena experienced in this state. McKenna contends that psilocybin mushrooms produce the same effects that DMT does, “the same confrontation with an alien intelligence and extremely bizarre translinguistic information complexes.”

Having established the basic premises for his argument, McKenna propounds a number of theories that “cast into doubt all of humanity's historical assumptions.” One such theory, presented in Psilocybin: The Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, is that the Stropharia cubensis mushroom did not evolve on earth, but reached Earth from some distant part of the galaxy through the process of spore-dispersal. He offers the idea that “the mushroom consciousness is the consciousness of the Other in hyperspace, which means in dream and in the psilocybin trance, at the quantum foundation of being, in the human future, and after death.”

One of McKenna’s most strongly held convictions is that “history is the shockwave of eschatology,” and that there is a transcendental object at the end of time that acts as a strange attractor, “drawing all human becoming toward it.” His “vision of the final human future is an effort to exteriorize the soul and internalize the body, so that the exterior soul will exist as a superconducting lens of translinguistic matter generated out of the body of each of us at a critical juncture at our psychedelic bar mitzvah.”

McKenna is not sure “why the phenomenon of tryptamine ecstasy has not been looked at by scientists, thrill seekers, or anyone else, but he recommends it to our attention.” He concludes by noting that “the tragedy of our cultural situation is that we have no shamanic tradition.” Since we no longer live in the kind of “archaic societies where shamanism is a thriving institution,” the exploration of these plants' effects can only be spoken of “as a phenomenon.” He claims not to know what we can do with this phenomenon, but he has a “feeling the potential is great.”